Before, During, and After: A Racial Equity Organizational Assessment Process
excerpt from Transforming Organizations by Operationalizing Racial Justice
Some of the early questions I hear are, “What does a racial justice or racially just organization actually look like” or “What are the steps to move forward and make progress? Or “How will we know when we get there?” The answer to the last question actually is that there is no arrival — there is only progress. Structural racism and the system of white supremacy are fluid; they are tricksters always making sure the tenets of the system are in place — dehumanizing People of Color through policies, practices, and narratives, and reinforcing systems of entitlement, privilege, and hierarchy. Work will always continue — that is why we need to build our knowledge, skills, courage, strength, relationships, and tenacity so we can daily address how the system is operating in our organizations, communities, and lives. There is never an off switch.[1]
A lot more organizations are now working to operationalize racial justice. Some are deeply taking on the work, some are performative, and some are only dipping in their toes. They are all a work in progress. They are experimenting, failing, succeeding, and learning. There is much uncertainty about the change process and how it evolves. Key to moving toward racial justice is building your individual and collective will to take risks and act boldly.
A racial equity [2] assessment process has different purposes, though one core purpose is engaging the Staff to share their truths and hopes for your organization and begin to lay the foundation for each person to support and work toward racial justice. It provides information from different perspectives to help you learn about the impact of your organization’s policies, practices, and culture. A racial equity assessment process will be different based on your organization’s size, budget, and what, specifically, you want to learn. Some organizations focus on learning from Staff about the impact of policies, their individual and collective knowledge and skills, and/or ideas on making progress toward racial justice. Some conduct a parallel process with their Board. Still, other organizations want to learn from their stakeholders, including partner organizations, clients, alumni of programs, constituents, funders, and/or community stakeholders. There is a list of racial equity organizational change assessment tools on page 65.
Here are some questions you might want to learn more about through an organizational racial equity assessment process: [3]
• How explicitly does our organization use the terms race, racism, power, and white privilege in organizational documents, in conversations and internal and external communication?
• What are the assumptions and experiences about how change happens within our organization?
• What are Staff and Board members’ experiences, perspectives, and knowledge about race, racism, white privilege, and white dominant culture? (This provides baseline data on Staff and trustees’ knowledge and skills, which can help inform the education sessions and be a benchmark for the organization.)
• How do the policies, practices, and culture align with the value of racial justice, specifically looking at manifestations of white dominant culture in organizational policies and practices?
• What are Staff and Board’s experiences with any racial inequities and/or harm that occurred in the workplace and what has been the impact and the organizational response?
• What are the organizational strengths that will help support the racial justice change process?
• What ideas do Staff and Board members have about how to operationalize racial justice?
A third party typically does a racial equity assessment process to ensure confidentiality and to share data back in a way that honors voices from different identity groups. This is especially important if some identity groups are relatively small within an organization, so anonymity can be ensured, and individual truths can be shared through disaggregated data and themes.
Before the Assessment
More organizations than I want to count want to start their change process with a racial equity organizational assessment. Sometimes they want data which they believe will be their guide moving forward. Data can be helpful. But there is work to do before, during, and after the assessment. You need to create a “container,”[4] form internal teams, build their capacity, work with senior leadership, create a common language and analysis, continue to normalize conversations about racism, build internal will, and learn to engage conflict. To be clear, all of those steps may look different based on what is going on in your organization. I highly recommend you take those steps before embarking on a racial equity assessment process.
What should you do if you work in a small organization or have no budget? I would suggest working on the relationships and normalizing conversations about racism (Items you can use for these discussions are listed on p 63.) You can also focus on centering relationships (see p. 30). Senior Leaders and Board members need to be explicit about their commitment and expectations. Talk about some of the key concepts mentioned above in the questions, and support people in building their analysis. Then have discussions about the questions above (or other questions from the assessments listed on p. 65). You may want to put some in an online survey and ask a volunteer or a partner to assist in sharing back the responses. Another option is that you could partner with other organizations, and each provide support to the other in managing the process and analysis.
Here are some reflection questions to inform your organization on when to launch a racial equity organizational assessment. Check the column that best reflects where your organization is on the items listed in the first column. The scale is from 1 to 5:
1-We have not started.
2-We have begun to explore the idea.
3-We have been investing time and focus.
4-We have been integrating this into how we do our work.
5-We are developing a level of consistency in the work and awareness of what we don’t know.
What did you learn about your organization? How does this inform what you might need to focus on prior to beginning a formal organizational assessment process that will help you seek truths and understand the impacts of current institutional structures and dynamics? I am not suggesting that your organization needs to have a high rating on all of these practices to go forward with an assessment. Instead, I am recommending that you are aware that these practices are part of the change process, and that you will only get traction on data gathered if the organization and the teams are working in these various areas (meaning you have at least “2” rating, and preferably at least a “2” or “3”). Otherwise, it is not worth doing a racial equity assessment because all you will have is some recounting of themes, facts, and figures. Organizations must operate from a place of integrity; you are asking folks to share their truths without a container in place to support processing them — and that will potentially cause harm.
During the Assessment
The assessment process is not just an exercise to see if your vendor policy is robust or if your recruitment and hiring process is inclusive. Your organization has a responsibility to address the harm and inequities Staff members raise. Too many times after information is shared, organizations stop, slow down, or heavily control the process (see story on p. 25). Sometimes organizations are afraid of potential legal/human resource implications but mostly people are afraid of the needed level of change. There will be those in organizations who repeatedly talk about equity but gatekeep by working hard to limit or stop change processes from succeeding.
During the assessment, the internal staff and Senior Leadership teams must work together to hold and guide the process and to make sure they are creating a “container” to discuss the truths, and, more importantly, to act on them. Your teams need to encourage Staff members to share the truths while at the same time, supporting the senior leadership team to be present and open and to not be defensive when the results of the assessment are shared. They also need to continue to have conversations about racism, power, and privilege and to discuss the change process overall. One of the tensions that comes up frequently is that different people have different expectations of the pace of change. It is critical to have regular frank discussions about the process and for everyone to have a realistic sense of what is doable to move the work forward.
Everyone needs to be fully involved in the change process — not just the internal teams — so it is extremely helpful during this time to talk about bandwidth. You may need to have some hard discussions about how Staff may need to reallocate their time so they can work on integrating racial justice practices and discussions into their work. If you are in the nonprofit sector, be sure to share the process with the foundations and donors who support your work, both so they understand what is involved and how it may impact the grant deliverables in your agreement and hopefully to inspire them to start or deepen their own change process and also financially support your change process.
After the Assessment
The data collected in the assessment can inform your organization so that you can understand and be aware of different points of view, and the impact of policies, practices, and culture on different kinds of stakeholders and members of different identity groups. The internal team and senior leaders will then work with the consultant team (if there is one supporting the process) to make meaning of the data and design a process that usually runs counter to how Staff is typically engaged — being very intentional to make meaning, understand all the different perspectives and begin discussing how to move forward.
What does countering the operating culture mean in this next step of creating an action plan? Think about all the other times you have created an action plan in your organization — and then flip it upside down and turn it sideways — explore, dream, contemplate, and intensely discuss how you can center relationships, joy, and your vision of racial justice.[5] Too many times, I have seen folks rush into creating a three-column list of actions, with who’s responsible, and determining a deadline that zaps all the energy out of the process. Use this as an opportunity to experiment with a new process. Be innovative and ensure that this isn’t a top-down decision-making process. Make sure you are centering the leadership and voices of those in the organization who are consistently underrepresented or marginalized. (More information about creating an action plan, p. 45)
After the group has had a chance to digest the data and the stories in the assessment, you will need to continue to build the internal will and infrastructure to co-create an action plan. For some organizations, the next steps chosen are transactional tasks (e.g., changing the hiring process, providing training, and updating HR policies). These tasks are important though insufficient to create a racially just organization. Transactional adjustments can also be seen as not being accountable to the Staff and constituents in general and especially Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian and Multiracial identified people in living the value of racial justice. I say this not to minimize the importance of doing each of those tasks; but to avoid seeing them as only steps in the direction of justice. Operationalizing racial justice means identifying and interrogating all of your policies, practices, and culture to uncover racial inequities and practices reinforcing white dominant culture, and causing racial inequities. It means enacting the vision of what a racially just organization looks like. It means taking risks and not just focusing on the low hanging fruit as sufficient outcomes. As Gita Gulati-Partee at OpenSource Leadership Strategies shares in its definition of racial equity, it “requires seeing differently, thinking differently, and doing the work differently.”
“What we don’t see, we assume can’t be. What a destructive assumption.”
~ Octavia Butler, Science Fiction Author
[1] Practicing Self-care for Sustainability and Impact, Developed by Norma Wong for Move to End Violence.
[2] This is a good example of the difference between racial equity and racial justice. Racial equity is focused on the “process of change to identify and interrogate the practices and culture which is creating and/or reinforcing racial inequities and white dominant behaviors.” It doesn’t mean there won’t be questions in an assessment focused on racial justice, but the assessment process falls under the definition of racial equity.
[3] Potapchuk, Maggie. Transforming Organizational Culture Assessment Tool (TOCA). MP Associates (2021).
[4] “Creating a container” describes holding a process for a group “to be challenged though not traumatized. Creating a container doesn’t avoid conflict and emotions or to create a false sense of “safe space.”” Rather we build a space to lean in and work through issues while also recovering from challenges, a space to “encourage people to bring their best selves, be respectful, assume good intent, be respectful provide grace to each other while using accountability practice. A container is created by developing a set of group norms, building a shared analysis, and focusing on a shared commitment for collective action for racial justice. This is a modification of the definition of container in this article. Gulati-Partee, Gita, and Maggie Potapchuk. “Paying Attention to White Culture and Privilege: A Missing Link to Advancing Racial Equity.” The Foundation Review 6, no. 1 (2014). p. 31.
[5] Some organizations ran out of steam here. They planned to do this but scaled back or didn’t move forward with it as they dealt with the reality of what they learned from the assessment and/or organizational pressures and demands.
Read the full document, Transforming Organizations by Operationalizing Racial Justice located on MP Associates — and includes the following sections:
· Reflections from My Practice — Why Update This Document Now?
· Grounding in Key Concepts
· Clarification on How Racial Equity and Racial Justice are Being Used
· A Few Words about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)
· Addressing white Dominant Culture in Creating a Racially Just Culture
GETTING READY
· Organizational and Individual Reflection
· About the Stories
· Building Internal Will
· Internal Teams Who Guide the Change Process
· The Teams
o Staff Racial Justice Leadership Team (RJLT)
o Senior Leadership Team
o Board Racial Justice Team
o Working Across Teams
o A Word about RFPs
o Working with External Consultants to Support your Racial Justice Change Process
o Being in Right Relationship with External Consultants
RACIAL JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE PROCESS
FOUNDATIONAL COMPONENTS
· Centering Relationships
· Generative Conflict
· Addressing Trauma in Organizations and Being Responsive for Healing
· Accountability Practices
BUILDING KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICE
· Collective Learning: Developing Shared Language & Analysis
· Conducting a Racial Equity Organizational Assessment
· Before the Assessment
· During the Assessment
· After the Assessment
DEVELOPING AN ORGANIZATIONAL ACTION PLAN
· Improving Organizational Muscle to Give and Receive Feedback
· Developing a Community of Practice and Action
· Developing a Racially Just Decision-Making Process
· Creating Racially Just Policies
· Developing Racially Just Programs, Grantmaking Initiatives, and Strategies
· Implementing Racial Identity-Based Caucuses
· Ensuring that the Evaluation Process Reflects Racial Justice Practices
CONCLUSION
CURATED RESOURCES ON OPERATIONALIZING RACIAL JUSTICE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
